Happy Ending

I've continued to work on the brown puzzle quilt since my last post. I have a very hard time taking a project down off the design wall once it's begun. I had a couple of better health days this week too. That always helps. ;- )

First of all I combed through my collection of smaller blocks in the Parts Department. That helped to fill in some of the white space between the nine and 12 inch blocks. I made a flock or two of geese too.

Then I had to figure out how to fill in the remaining background areas. Everything I'd done so far was based on a 3" grid so I started cutting 3" squares (3.5" in their raw state).

I played with value placements over the course of a couple of days and then finally decided it wasn't going to get any better. I started at the bottom of the quilt, sewing the loose squares together first and working my way up to the larger blocks. I discovered I could assemble the lower part of the quilt in two halves. Once that was done I could move the upper section down the design wall for easier access to those top rows.

I had to make a few more geese to flesh out that upper left corner. Then it was a matter of figuring out how to divide up and assemble that upper section.

With the puzzle complete the flimsy measured 51" wide and 63" long. At this point I was feeling a lot better about this project. However, I wanted a bit more width and length since this is going to be given to an adult male.

The simple solution was to add a frame and border treatment. The prints I thought I would use for that purpose didn't look as good as I'd expected. Fortunately the leftover strips from the back of our F2F quilt for the Ovarian Cancer Quilt Project turned out to be perfect for the frame. And I had enough of the warm brown print I'd used in some of the geese to do the outer border.

After whining about this project in the last post, I now love this quilt top. This will be my contribution to Covered in Love as part of the Hands2Help quilt drive sponsored by Sarah over at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I'm delighted to have the top done already. I can now relax, confident that it will be quilted and bound well before the deadline for mailing this year. :- )

Sunday Pondering

I've just been visiting Esther over at ipatchandquilt. She has been working with donated blocks (and fabric) for charity quilts. Some of the prints that were donated date from the 1990's. They are high quality fabrics but not what Esther would choose for herself or her home. She's doing wonderful things with them. However, her comments and another group effort called Bee, myself and I, have me thinking about what I'm currently working on versus what I enjoy looking at or living with.

I have not yet felt the need to participate in the selfish sewing bee. I pretty much get to do what I want here in The Magpie's Nest, which feels selfish to begin with. It also pleases me to be able to make and donate quilts to people in need or worthy causes. So what need have I for selfish sewing?

Events yesterday have given me cause to ponder. The way things do in this life, one thing led to another and I am currently building another donation quilt. It began with blocks from my Parts Department, and since the intended recipient is a man I chose those blocks I thought were more manly in appearance.

The problem is that they are, for the most part, brown. And because this will be what I refer to as a puzzle quilt I need to make more blocks in brown to fill in the gaps.

Brown is not my favorite color. In fact, it is probably one of my least favorite colors. I prefer a more tropical palette, like these friendship blocks from my local quilt guild:

What made it so bad yesterday is that it's suddenly spring here. I worked on building this brown quilt, then had to run an errand out in the sunshine where I could see the flowering trees and the daffodils in beds and boxes around town. All that wonderful color and I had to come back to my little barren yard and deck and back to that brown project. {sigh}

If I had another design wall I could put those friendship blocks back up and play with them some more; take a break from the browns. But I don't, so I believe I will have to content myself with some needlepoint in happy colors. In other words, selfish sewing. ;- )

And just in case you haven't had a response from me to a comment you may have left on a previous post please know that I've read them and appreciate your kind words. Toxins and migraines have kept me from being more social again. (They've also kept me from putting even a few flowering annuals in the pots lining my back deck. Maybe I can do that tomorrow.)

His First Quilt

First of all, let me beg your pardon for gloating over my youngest son's recent accomplishment. James has been long arm quilting other people's quilts for over three years now. He just put the finishing touches on the first quilt he made from start to finish. He designed it, pieced it, appliqued parts of it, did the quilting, and put on the binding with a flat piping to add interest. I give you his interpretation of Majora's Mask from the Nintendo game The Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask:

Naturally the colors don't read true to life in the photograph. The head is more purple in person. It's actually a blue and pinky-purple batik. The eyeballs were fussy cut and appliqued onto the black background. The horns are appliqued as well. Everything else is pieced.

The quilting disappears on most of the front but really stands out on the back:

Looks a little scary in fact!

The most noticeable quilting on the front are details or outlines. When you look closely though, the border treatment is impressive.

And is easier to see on the back:

I've added a link to his business page on Facebook in my sidebar. Just look for the hearts he quilted on my yellow block from Grandma's Box of Crayons. I'd be happy to put you in touch with him via email if you're not on Facebook. :- )

Diary Quilt - My Version of Quilty 365

I've been doing a good job keeping up with my plan to cut a strip a day to reflect a year of my life. I began this mid-November last year after reading about Audrey's project featuring circles, Quilty 365. I have almost four columns at this point. There will be a total of 13 when I've circled back around to November this year.

There have only been a few days when I've had a struggle to choose what felt like an appropriate print for the day. I have quite the selection of novelty prints. They've been a big help. For example, one day I spent quite a bit of money online and the next day I made Ohio Star blocks.

Here's a section where I worked on a basket quilt, bought a new print, then bound the teal and cream quilt that we sent to Ohio for our F2F playmate. I had quite the headache the day after that.

Audrey started her circle project by pulling from her scrap bin exclusively. I've chosen instead to pull from my stash, wherever the right print might be found. Others have put their own personal spin (pardon the pun!) on Quilty 365. Audrey is hosting a link party so you can click over to here and see who else is playing along and how they're participating.

Now the question is, what to do for Leap Day? ;- )

Endings and Beginnings

While I was away from the blog I finished the twin-bed-size quilts for our twin granddaughters.

Fronts on the left, backs on the right.

The top I built out of my Parts Department was backed, quilted, and bound. Here it is at our local quilt guild meeting this week, photographed by one of our guild members:

about 85" x 85"

I pulled together most of the 12" Ohio star blocks I made over the course of the Rainbow Scrap Challenge last year to make this top, also photographed at the guild meeting:

about 84" x 84"

I think quilting will really make this top sing.

I've just completed another large top too but I think I'll give it it's own post. (Hopefully I won't forget or get distracted!)

Now it's time to get back into making blocks. Late last year Gayle and I were pushing each other to make orange Ohio Stars. I've lost track of what she may have accomplished since then. I only had half a dozen when I put my head down to begin building these bed quilts. The other day I had occasion to get out some orange prints so I made another 9" Ohio star for the collection. That started me wondering how to set these new blocks. Right now I'm considering an alternate block to put between the stars...

At the moment my plan is to make a quilt I'll keep for myself. A personal quilt is going to feel small after building the bed size tops I've been working on lately!

I believe I will whoop it up on Friday and link up with the other rainbow scrappers Saturday morning. :- )